Coming Out of the Ice

Victor Herman (September 25, 1915 – March 25, 1985) was a Jewish-American who spent 18 years as a Soviet prisoner in the Gulags of Siberia. He briefly held the world record in 1934 for the highest parachute jump and became known as the 'Lindbergh of Russia'. He was one of thousands of Americans sympathetic towards Communism who went to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s to work but who met tragic fates during the Stalin purges.

His memoir of his experiences, Coming Out of the Ice (1979), became the basis for a 1982 CBS-TV movie starring John Savage and country-singer Willie Nelson.

Herman was born in Detroit where his father, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, was active in organizing unions at Ford Motor Company. After Henry Ford made a deal with the Soviets, 300 Ford workers and their families from Detroit who held Communist sympathies were sent to Russia to help build a new Ford factory in Gorky. Victor Herman's family were among them.

In 1931 when Herman was 16, he moved with his family to Russia for a 3-year work shift, while retaining US citizenship. However, in 1934, the Great Purge began and many American expatriates were disappearing, or were arrested and deported. During these years Herman focused on his prodigious athletic talents and was noticed and recruited by the Soviet Air Force who taught him how to parachute. He was competitive and strove to be number one. On September 6, 1934 he achieved international notice after he set the World Record for the highest parachute jump, from 24,000 feet. He became known as the 'Lindbergh of Russia'.

Soviet authorities asked Herman to sign the World Record documents which included a blank space for citizenship which Herman filled in as "U.S.A." After continually refusing to change it to the U.S.S.R., he was arrested in 1938 for "counter-revolutionary activities" and spent a year in a local prison that included brutal tortures: he had to sit on a bench 18 hours a day unmoving and nonspeaking facing a door, he was beaten in his kidneys every night for 52-days straight, he was thrown into a cell with violent criminals who tried to kill him, the diet was starvation, among other things. Most of his fellow call-mates died during this period from similar deprivations. Herman believed his youth and strength saved him.

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